The story of Ultravasan

A happy coincidence led to Ultravasan seeing the light of day. Namely the fact that Mora was home to one of the world's foremost sports organizers, Vasaloppet, as well as home to one of the world's foremost ultrarunners, Jonas Buud! He brought experiences from ultrarunning races all over the world and was eager to give other ultrarunners the opportunity to run a race in the classic terrain between Sälen and Mora. "If you can ski and bike between Sälen and Mora, surely you can run it too," enthusiasts said.

It was not hard to find interested test runners, for there were many who wanted to run an ultramarathon on classic ground. In connection with Vasastafetten 2010 there were therefore about twenty experienced ultrarunners, invited from all around the Nordic region, running a test race to see how it would all work. Yes, a few had actually even run the whole stretch before that. The race was named “SM90”, where SM stood for Sälen-Mora and 90 for the amount of kilometres – but unofficially “Ultravasan” was already a potential name associated with this test race. (Ultra is the name of races longer than the marathon distance of 42,195 metres, and “trail” or “terrain” means that the main part of the race is not on asphalt.)

After a few years of thinking and planning it was time, in 2014, for Vasaloppet to challenge the runners of the world! That was the starting shot for the first real Ultravasan between Sälen and Mora. The trend with individual extreme races is very strong in many parts of the world and the goal with Ultravasan was to become the largest ultra trail race in Scandinavia and attract a strong international elite.

Ultravasan has two races, one 90 km and one 45 km. The 90 km race starts in Sälen, like the traditional Vasaloppet, and follows the course eastwards towards Mora. The 45 km race starts in Oxberg and largely follows the same stretch as Halvvasan along the Oxberg lake to Vasslan before joining the Ultravasan 90 course. Both races have a class for women and one for men.

Close to 1,500 runners registered for the first race, which was a huge success, not least for home runner Jonas Buud, who won. The next year, 2015, he repeated his victory and set an impressive track record, running 90 kilometres in 5.45.08. Another addition in 2014 was the Barnens Vasalopp running race (originally Barnens Springvasa) in Sälen and Mora for the very youngest. In 2017 it is time for the fourth edition of Ultravasan!